


Lop-sided on the Side of the Angels

by babygotbackstrom



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 22:56:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10626870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babygotbackstrom/pseuds/babygotbackstrom
Summary: The sun doesn’t make vampires sick anymore but that doesn’t mean Nicklas Backstrom is a morning person.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [screamlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/gifts).



> oh god  
> okay: title from dh lawrence's _elemental_ [ _I am sick of lovable people/Somehow they are a lie._ ]  
> blame screamlet

If Ovechkin is going, Backstrom is going. It’s a natural law except for how it’s so fucking unnatural. Fucking Europeans, they’d say, and their weird customs. No one gives a shit that vampires are playing hockey; not since they cured sun-sickness and blood-lust and instituted a buddy system. 

Vampires might be marginally stronger than regular humans but the cold makes them sluggish so it’s considered a fair trade. Post-game interview scrums with players wrapped in anti-hypothermia blankets have become normal, like the flash of an over-long canine or a too-red bottom lip.

The NHL tried to ban players from traveling but they hadn’t reckoned with Ovechkin.

If Ovechkin is going, Backstrom is going, and if Ovechkin is going, Malkin is going, and if Malkin is going, Crosby is going and if Crosby is going, McDavid is going, even if no one knows what McDavid actually is. 

-

The sun doesn’t make vampires sick anymore but that doesn’t mean Nicklas Backstrom is a morning person. He grumps and grumbles and latches onto Alex’s throat because he knows that Alex, at least, will have already eaten. 

“Lazy, Nicky,” says Alex, sighing as he strokes the back of Nicky’s neck. “You make me always eat for two.” 

Nicky licks the puncture marks closed and surges up to kiss Alex properly. They’re better at it now, than when they were fledglings, bloody-mouthed and always hungry, tearing at each other to keep from tearing at humans. 

Sometimes, Nicky still bites when he kisses. He’s biting now, and whimpering against Alex’s lips and their mouths fill up with blood. 

Vampires run hot, and Nicky runs hotter than most. 

It’s why he loves the ice, Alex thinks. It’s where Nicky is most himself, and his plays are as sharp as his fangs, and at least as devastating.

-

“I hate Sidney Crosby,” says Alex, watching helplessly as Ilya leads the Russian departure off the ice. 

“No,” says Zhenya. “You don’t.” 

“No,” says Alex. “I guess not.” It’s why he’s still standing here, even though it’s cold, and he feels miserable, and a silver medal in the Czech Republic is a failure. “I miss Kolya.” 

“Come with me and Sid later,” says Zhenya. “You’ll feel better.”

Alex thinks the only way he’ll feel better is if he can drain Crosby dry but Zhenya mightn’t like that.

-

“Do you think that Ovechkin has an unfair advantage, being a vampire in the league?”

“He’s one of dozens.”

“But he’s a hard hitter—”

“Yeah, I think that’s more because he’s built like the side of a house.” 

-

Alex was drafted and bitten and eager to play straight away but the lockout happened.

Nicky was drafted and bitten but unwilling to deal with being a new vampire and a rookie NHL player in the same season.

Nicky wasn’t sure he’d make it here at all, not when hunger ripples through his veins like flames. It only eases on the ice when everything is cold and slow and he can take stride after burning stride, easy as a metronome. 

It’s his first season at the Show and Nicky thinks he’s made a terrible mistake. He doesn’t know how he can keep it together. Even though they say that vampirification doesn’t improve senses, Nicky thinks his sense of smell is stronger, to say nothing of his hearing. 

The locker room is full of heart beats and sweat and blood and Nicky sometimes bites down on his tongue so his mouth will flood with that metallic taste.

“Come with me,” says Alex. He’s still wearing his skates, though he’s down to his undershirt, like Nicky. He throws Nicky’s gloves at him and picks up his own pair.

Alex is not his captain though that writing is on the wall. Nicky follows him. Alex grabs a bucket of pucks and his stick, so Nicky reaches for his stick too and they go back out onto the ice.

Nicky stands still for a moment. His skin is still pink from exertion but the fine hairs on his arms stand up and gooseflesh ripples across his forearms. His heart is still racing and he’s sure Alex can hear it. 

Alex tips out the pucks near the half-board and skates across the rink. “Set me up, Backy,” he says, as though he has not spent hours and days working on his one-timer. “Set me up until your arms are shaking and you can’t breathe.”

Nicky is no masochist but he can see the appeal. 

It becomes habit, at the end of practice; two vampire fledglings, passing the puck between them until Nicky longs to be on Alex’s line. 

“Do you hate me yet?” asks Alex, draping an arm over Nicky’s shoulders. It is late and Nicky is hungry and it is the most natural thing in the world to turn towards Alex’s throat and bite down hard.

When Nicky met Alex, first at the draft and second at Worlds, he didn’t know that they could be great together. He didn’t know just how compatible they would be, on and off the ice.

If anyone had told him that he would forge a bond with Alexander Ovechkin, over buckets of pucks and late nights at the rink, he would have laughed at the impossibility of it all. He, for one, does not think it was inevitable. 

Just because Alex called his name at the draft, and just because Nicky has been calling Alex’s name ever since, it doesn’t mean that they are meant to be.

It’s just that they’re meant to be. When two vampires are compatible ( _insanely compatible, Nicky_ , crows Alex at every available opportunity), they become conduits for each other’s hunger, and they become each other’s touchstones, and anchors. 

Nicky doesn’t like biting strangers but he loves biting Alex. 

Everyone thinks Alex is the one to be afraid of. He plays like he's on fire, one spark away from immolation and, if this is to be his last game, he'll make it memorable.

Alex is not the one to be afraid of, and he loves biting strangers.

-

Fetisov was the first made vampire in the NHL. Not all Russians in the NHL are vampires but all the Russian vampires in the NHL are made vampires.

“Doesn’t make Canadians better,” says Alex, sleepily. “Just because they’re born vampires.”

“Have you been listening to Don Cherry again?” asks Nicky. 

“No,” says Alex. “Yes,” he says, after a moment. “Did you know that Shitsburgh beat us because Crosby is a _pure_ vampire? Not like us Europeans. We cheat.” 

Nicky frowns. “He knows that Malkin is made, too, right?”

“Shush, Nicky. We don’t talk about Zhenya in bed. Only thing we have in common with Don Cherry.” 

“And he knows that Braden is born, yeah?”

“ _Nicky_ ,” Alex starts. “Wait. No. It’s okay to talk about Holts in bed.” 

“He is very handsome,” says Nicky, leaning in to drag a thumbnail down the side of Alex’s neck, incising neatly before he latches on. 

“Maybe he help with your big appetite?” Alex’s laugh is cut off abruptly when Nicky bites harder. “No, no, Nicky, I know.”

Nicky raises his head and his lips and teeth are stained red. “Just you, Alex,” he whispers, or growls.

“Just me.”

-

At the All-Star game, there is a lot of attention on the fact that Wayne Gretzky will be stepping in to coach the Metropolitan team. 

“Everyone wants us to be on same line, Sid, see how I behave under proper Canadian vampire,” says Alex, cheerfully. “Want you to be my captain. They don’t know how—”

“Shut up, Sasha,” says Sid, in passable Russian that he must have learned from Zhenya.

“You lost coin toss with Zhenya this year, huh? It’s okay you miss him. We can send him photos when we fuck later.” 

“I hate you so much right now.”

“You love me, Sidney Crosby. We’re best friends. I tell everyone.” 

They will fuck later, of course, and feed off each other. It’ll help their game, because they both want to win, but it’s nothing they haven’t done before. Alex has fond memories of nestling between Sid’s thighs and drinking from his femoral artery, back when they were territorial rookies who needed to discover their boundaries.

(They still haven’t found them.)

-

Nicky doesn’t mind that Alex bites other people. Alex knows that, sometimes, Nicky enjoys it. They don’t go to clubs as often as they did when they were young, and Sam and Greenie ran with them, but they still go, from time to time.

Nicky sits in the VIP section, like a king surveying his realm, and Andre often cuddles close. He trusts so completely in Nicky’s control that Nicky must trust himself, too, even if Andre’s skin is cool and his heartbeat is slow. 

Alex is down on the dancefloor, throwing himself about with the same sort of abandon that he does on the ice. When he sinks his teeth into the neck of a willing partner, Nicky can feel it. It makes Nicky’s toes curl and his whole body shudder with pleasure. 

This is the mistake that people make: They see Alex on the ice, passionate and wild, and they think he has no control. Alex has the best control of any vampire Nicky knows, apart from Crosby, perhaps. Nicky, on the other hand; Nicky gives the impression that control comes easy to him. 

It does not. 

For Nicklas Backstrom, control is a constant struggle. He turns his face towards Andre’s neck. He keeps his mouth closed and breathes in. He can feel blood hit the back of his throat because Alex is projecting, deliberately, and Nicky takes a quivering breath. There are tentative fingers at the back of his neck, creeping into his hair, and Andre’s whole body curls towards him.

“You can, if you want,” says Andre, his words almost lost to the heavy bass that thrums through Nicky’s body like blood and fire and Alex. 

Nicky was only human. His lips part. 

They have all offered, at some point. Mike, and Tom, and Jakub. (Greenie, too, and Nicky could not resist him.)

He kisses the pulse point on the side of Andre’s neck. Alex is feeding more slowly now. He’s savouring it and Nicky’s mouth feels as though it is full of blood.

He breathes in and in and in. He drops his hand to Andre’s thigh and lets his fingers idle along the inside seam of his jeans, as though Nicky could be capable of such delicacy in the midst of a feeding frenzy. As he presses the heel of his hand against Andre’s crotch, he delights in the way Andre’s pulse speeds up, the way it might if Nicky bit.

Alex is amused, and aroused, and Andre is young and aroused. 

Neither of them last long.

He pulls back and looks at Andre, who is panting and almost as warm as Nicky. Nicky smiles at him, and touches his fingertips to Andre’s cheek, ensuring that they meet each other’s gaze for a long moment.

“Thank you,” he says. “Alex is coming back.”

-

“We are going to the Olympics,” says Alex.

“It’s nearly twelve months away,” says Nicky. “You’re not packing already, are you? I want to win a Stanley Cup first.”

“No,” says Alex. “I mean. We’re going. Whatever Bettman says. Ted says we can go. I want to beat Crosby.”

“Is Crosby even going?” 

“He will,” says Alex. “Stupid league loves stupid Crosby rivalry narrative too much. And Zhenya loves Crosby. You know he’s ridiculous when they have oceans between them.” 

“There’s something about glass houses and stones,” says Nicky. He wonders what happened to the rule about not talking about Malkin in bed. (He doesn’t really wonder, it’s a rule that’s been flexible at best, especially when Malkin and Crosby are in bed with them.) “I’m hungry,” he says.

Alex holds out his wrist and continues scrolling through his phone with his other hand. It’s not long before he realises the error of his ways and drops his phone off the side of the bed so he can slide his hand into his shorts, tugging himself to hardness while Nicky feeds greedily.

-

When Alex is drafted, he is given the choice. He has more time than most Russian NHL players, thanks to the lockout. Ted Leonsis puts forward the case. The Washington Capitals will, of course, pay for the transformation. It will lock Alex into two decades.

It’s what NHL teams do, more and more. They can pay vampires less per year, over a longer period, and they are guaranteed that there will be no wear and tear. They cannot be entirely protected from injury, although it takes a lot more force to concuss a vampire. It is considered worth it.

Alex isn’t sure, at first. 

“What if I suck, after they change me?” 

It’s a risk, of course. Vampirism does affect fundamental change. Alex won’t be human anymore and, while it’s unlikely Alex will lose his hockey talent, it’s possible. It doesn’t matter that it’s equally likely that he will emerge with some other new talent instead. He wants to be a hockey player, not a pianist or an Olympic luger.

“I think it is expected that vampires suck.”

“Shut up, Zhenya.”

Zhenya has absolutely no doubts. He’s going to be a vampire and he’s going to play in Pittsburgh. It must be nice to be so certain.

“It will change us,” says Alex. He lifts his hand to touch his chest. There is a cross on a chain. 

“Not in any important way,” says Zhenya. “We will still be us.” 

Alex nods, after a while. He will still be Alexander Ovechkin. He will still be a son and a brother. He will show those Americans how to play hockey.

He signs the form. He signs his life away. 

-

“We’re going to win the Cup,” says Nicky. 

“Nicky, _noo_ ,” moans Alex, pressing his hands against his ears. “You’ll jinx it.”

“What the fuck are superstitions to us?” asks Nicky. “What the fuck does sun matter? Or crucifixes, or garlic, or fucking playoff beards when we could live for ever?” 

“We’re gonna live forever,” says Alex. “And you still won’t be able to grow a playoff beard.”

“And we’re going to win the Cup.” 

“Maybe two,” says Alex.

“Why not make it three?”

“Better than Crosby.” Alex folds Nicky into his arms and Nicky tilts his head to the side. 

“Yes,” he says. “Please.”

Alex bites.


End file.
